She returned home late that evening and in her excitement repeated almost all of what Rachel told her to Frank, and of how longingly she had looked at the photographs of Donnie and Peggy. “I’d—like to bring her home to meet them,” she said nervously. “If that’s all right with you.”
Frank was cautious but not dismissive. “Dr. Higuchi said the sulfa drugs reduced the bacteria in a patient’s body to noncontagious levels?”
“Yes. Rachel says she’s shown no sign of the disease for almost two years. The risk to us—to the kids—is basically nonexistent.” She added earnestly, “Oh, Frank, she’s lost so much in her life. She deserves to meet her grandchildren. They deserve to meet her.”
Frank let out a breath. “Okay. What about Etsuko?”
“I’ll ask her first thing tomorrow.”
Etsuko readily agreed and Ruth explained to the kids that they had a third grandmother—a Hawaiian grandmother—who was coming for a visit. Donnie said enthusiastically, “She’s from Hawai'i?”—though he pronounced it “How ah ya,” the way Arthur Godfrey did on his radio show. “Oh boy! Does she live in a grass shack?”
“Uh, no,” Ruth said. “She lives in an apartment building. One thing, though. She hurt her hand, years ago, so it looks a little scary at first. You two be good and don’t say anything to make her feel bad about it, okay?”
They nodded soberly and promised that they would not.
She called Rachel at her hotel and told her only that she would be picking her up for lunch in Japantown. Rachel seemed happy just to be seeing Ruth again—but when they pulled up in front of the house on Fifth Street, Rachel seemed confused: “I thought we were going to lunch?”
“We are,” Ruth said with a smile. “Frank is a great cook.”
The astonishment and joy in Rachel’s face was lovely to see.
Frank and the kids came out to greet Rachel. But preceding them was Max, who eagerly raced down the flagstone path to the sidewalk, barking a welcome. At first Ruth feared he would bowl Rachel over, but she just squatted down to his level as he approached, allowed him to sniff her left hand, and said, “Well now, I hadn’t heard about you, what’s your name?”
“This is Max. He’s still a puppy.”
“He certainly is.” Rachel scratched under his chin and allowed Max to lick her face, which both impressed and delighted Ruth.
“Did you have a dog at Kalaupapa?”
“Two. Hōku and Setsu. Pets were the only children we were allowed.”
Frank pulled Max away as Donnie and Peggy ran up to Rachel.
“Are you really our grandma from Hawai'i?” Donnie asked breathlessly.
“I am,” Rachel said, her eyes bright with the wonder of this boy. “Are you really my grandson from California?”
“Sure I am!”
She looked at Peggy. “And you’re my granddaughter? Peggy, isn’t it?”
“Yeah!”
There was such happiness in Rachel’s face that Ruth wanted to cry.
“You’re both so beautiful,” Rachel said softly. “More beautiful than I could ever have dreamed.”
She stood up just as Etsuko, moving a little more slowly these days at sixty-three, came down the flagstone path and, to Rachel’s surprise, draped a homemade lei of pink azalea blossoms around her neck.
“Aloha,” Etsuko said warmly.
Rachel, moved, made a small bow to her and said, “Konnichiwa.”
“My name is Etsuko. May I call you Rachel?”
“Of course. I’m honored to meet Ruth’s mother.”
“As am I,” Etsuko replied graciously.
The words brought tears to Rachel’s eyes.
“And I’m Frank.” He smiled and extended a hand. Rachel took it in her left hand as she gazed into his face.
“You have very kind eyes,” she told him.
* * *
The minute they were inside Peggy ran upstairs and came back holding up a recalcitrant Snowball to meet Rachel. “This is Snowball, she’s my best friend in the whole world,” Peggy said. “She even sleeps with me at night.”
Frank had prepared a delicious meal of sautéed sea bass, rice, and green beans. Over lunch, Etsuko peppered Rachel with questions about what Hawai'i was like these days and reminisced fondly about her days in Waimānalo and Honolulu’s Chinatown.
“If there was only one place I could revisit in this life,” Etsuko said wistfully, “it would be Honolulu. Some of the happiest years of my life were spent there.” Etsuko also solved a nagging problem of nomenclature for Ruth by inquiring of Rachel, “What is Hawaiian for ‘Mother’?”—and henceforth as Etsuko was Okāsan, Rachel was Makuahine. The kids called her “Grandma Rachel,” which seemed to please her greatly.
“What’s Hawai'i like?” Donnie wanted to know. “Are there cannibals and headhunters?”
“Donnie!” Ruth admonished.
Rachel just laughed. “Wrong hemisphere, I’m afraid. Though it’s said Hawai'i did have human sacrifice at one time, many centuries ago.”
“Neat!” Donnie declared. Peggy agreed enthusiastically.
Ruth sagged in her seat. “And you thought they were such angels.”
“Oh, you should’ve met me when I was their age,” Rachel said with a chuckle. She told her grandson, “Hawai'i is a place of gentle trade winds and crashing surf. Of sweet ukulele music and erupting volcanoes. Of peace and serenity and restless ghosts that march across the night.”
“Ghosts?” Peggy gasped.
“Volcanoes?” Donnie marveled. “Do they shoot lava into the air?”
“Sometimes.” Rachel told them a little of her childhood, the trolleys she used to ride, of body-surfing at Waikīkī and of her father Henry, the sailor. “He visited some of the most spectacular and beautiful places on earth,” she said, “but he always came back to Hawai'i because he loved Hawai'i best.”
When she mentioned the dolls he brought her from exotic ports, Peggy announced, “I have dolls!”—and immediately took her new grandma by the hand, up the steps, and into her bedroom, where she introduced her to her dolls. “This is Elsa, this one is Reiko, this is Maggie.”
“Oh, they’re very pretty,” Rachel told her. “It’s good to have friends, isn’t it? Ones who love you and stay with you no matter what?”
“Yeah. ’Specially at night, when it’s dark.”
“Yes,” Rachel agreed, “especially then.”
Before the day was out Ruth and Frank invited Rachel to check out of her hotel and stay with them. There was a futon that Ralph slept on when he came over for the weekend, and Etsuko slept on that—rather happily; she had never quite taken to Western mattresses—while Rachel slept in her bed.
That first night, when Rachel took off her shoes and stockings, Etsuko couldn’t help but see that her feet were fleshy stumps—the toes having been resorbed back into the body. She looked away before Rachel noticed, but she thought: This woman has endured. She knows what it means to gaman.
Rachel stayed in California for two weeks, playing dolls and go and even cowboys and Indians with Donnie and Peggy. Ruth, watching them play, saw glimpses of the mother she might have had, even as Rachel delighted in the chance to be a grandmother as well as a mother for the first time.
One day Ruth drove everyone to San Francisco, one of the distant ports Rachel’s father had visited. They corkscrewed down Lombard Street, strolled along the Embarcadero, and rode cable cars. Ralph came over from Berkeley to join them for lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf, and after being introduced to Rachel he said with feigned puzzlement, “Okay, so you’re Ruth’s Hawaiian mother. But what does that make you to me? ‘Half mother’? No, that’s not right. ‘Mother once removed’? No, that’s not it either. There’s only one thing to do, Rachel: I’m going to hānai you.”
Other than Ralph, the only ones present who understood that were Rachel and Etsuko, and they both laughed.
“What does ha-nigh mean?” Peggy asked.